''Lục súc tranh công'' (六畜爭功 "The Quarrel of the Six Beasts") is a classic narrative poem written in late Eighteenth Century Vietnam. Although the title is given in classical

chữ Hán ( , ) are the Chinese characters that were used to write Literary Chinese in Vietnam, Literary Chinese (; ) and Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary in Vietnamese language, Vietnamese. They were officially used in Vietnam after the Red River Delta region ...

the poem itself is written in the vernacular

Vietnamese language Vietnamese () is an Austroasiatic languages, Austroasiatic language Speech, spoken primarily in Vietnam where it is the official language. It belongs to the Vietic languages, Vietic subgroup of the Austroasiatic language family. Vietnamese is s ...

in Vietnamese

chữ Nôm Chữ Nôm (, ) is a logographic writing system formerly used to write the Vietnamese language. It uses Chinese characters to represent Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary and some native Vietnamese words, with other words represented by new characters ...

and

lục bát Lục bát (, ) is a traditional Vietnamese verse form – historically first recorded in Chữ Nôm script. "Lục bát" is Sino-Vietnamese for "six-eight", referring to the alternating lines of six and eight syllables. It will always begin with ...

verse. The poem is anonymous. It is set in the

tuồng ''Hát tuồng'' (, Chữ Nôm: 咭從) or ''hát bội'' (, Chữ Nôm: 咭佩) is a form of Vietnamese theatre. Hát tuồng is often referred to as classical "Vietnamese opera" influenced by Chinese opera. Tuồng is distinct from the older h ...

form of traditional drama.The Vietnam review - Volume 4 - Page 6 1998 "Among the corpus of classical Vietnamese literature, the Lục súc tranh công (The Quarrel of the Six Beasts) stands out in several respects. This narrative poem is cast in the form of a piece of traditional drama known as tuồng rather than in six-eight (luc bat) verse, the conventional medium for storytelling. The style features a heavy use of verbal parallelism (biin ngdu), beginning ...."

References

External links

* Wikisourc
súc tranh công
Vietnamese poems {{poem-stub